The NBA is the biggest dream of basketball players, and I'm no different.
Coming out of high school, I think it was good for me instead of going to college because college and the NBA are two different things. You can dominate on the college level, but the NBA is a whole different story. The dudes that do the best are the ones who work hard.
Being from Flint, especially in the basketball community, is a big deal. Basketball in Flint, you're pretty much like a god there if you play college basketball or are lucky enough to make it to the NBA.
That's what people don't understand, that in the NBA these are the best 450 players in the world, in the game of basketball, are in the NBA.
For men's college coaches through to the NBA, I think basketball people are basketball people. When you start talking the game, gender has gone out the window, and they just talk basketball with you.
College is so different from the NBA. You have three guys coming at you and trapping all over the place, and NBA is different. There's more space.
I'd read about NBA players in magazines when I was growing up in Congo, but I had never actually seen what NBA basketball looked like because we didn't have access to a satellite for TV.
After spending more than 17 years playing for the NBA, in the summertime, I always came back to community service and different basketball clinics.
I played college basketball in West Virginia for two years, and then I graduated from NYU with a sports management degree because I realized the NBA's not going to happen.
The NBA and college are two totally different games.
A lot of times things get blown out of proportion in a negative light, especially in the NBA, ... But there are a lot of players in the NBA who really care about the community and want to use their basketball-playing ability for a good cause.
I want to thank the NBA and U.S.A. Basketball. Words can't describe my feeling. I was a small town kid from Hamburg, Arkansas, and you provided me a platform to live out my passion, the game of basketball, on the world's grandest stage.
Even before I made my high school team, I'd say I want to be a NBA player, and people laughed at me with, 'Get out of here, you ain't going to be a NBA player. You don't even play basketball.'
For a long time, I thought I was going to play basketball. There's not many 6-4 white guys playing the three spot in the NBA, so I realized I probably didn't have much of a future in basketball and that football was probably going to be my best bet.
Basketball is definitely basketball and that's what we love to play, but in the NBA, there's a business side of it. It's a very serious matter and it's important. It's important to me, it's important to my family.
I wanted to do two things when I was growing up, about your age. I wanted to play in the NBA, and I wanted to be a businessman after my basketball career was over, and that is what I am doing now.